


Fallen Star

by mydogwatson



Series: Postcard Tales: Interlude [1]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Drug Use, M/M, Pining, Pre-Slash, season 4, sherlockpov
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-21
Updated: 2017-08-21
Packaged: 2018-12-18 08:05:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 709
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11870103
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mydogwatson/pseuds/mydogwatson
Summary: A little sad musing from a drug house.





	Fallen Star

**Author's Note:**

> Well, this is a surprise! Usually I only create Postcard Tales when I travel to London, but recently I went to a writers' retreat in Toronto and so I decided to do six little Tales for that trip. So this is the first. I hope you enjoy it; as always I love hearing from you. I hope to post every other day, but things are a bit crazy at the moment, so all I can promise is to do my best.

“Didn’t you used to be somebody?”

The voice is grating. Harsh. Accusatory.

I do not even bother to shift my gaze from its careful contemplation of the wall, at which I have been staring for almost five minutes. Or three hours. Possibly two days. Barely visible beneath several layers of dirt and the sour yellow tint left from decades of cigarette smoke is a wallpaper with a used-to-be-garish field of red poppies. Which is ironic, I suppose, but my mood is not such that I can appreciate irony at the moment.

All I do know for sure is that this is not the familiar [comforting?] design that covers the walls of 221B, a place that sometimes feels like a distant memory, although I have only been away for two days. Or maybe a week.

She, whoever the female is occupying the lumpy mattress next to me, kicks my leg with her Doc Marten-clad foot. “Hey, you,” she says and her voice is no less irritating.

I want to tell her to stop kicking me, because occasionally one does weary of being used as a punching bag for others. Even if the blows are sometimes deserved. But, instead, I make an effort to straighten my shoulders [which is not as easy as it should be, since I am lying on a filthy yoga mat, not to mention the fact that I am somewhat high] and also to sound like myself. 

But am I myself? What does that even mean anymore?

“I am still somebody,” I finally say in my poshest voice. At least it sounds posh to me.

When she only laughs in response, the sound is like someone dragging their fingernails across a chalkboard. “Yeah, mate, you’re a fucking junkie, just like me and everyone else in this place.”

Well, that is patently absurd, of course. This return to the so-called sins of my past is just a brief detour. A time-out. I am entitled to that, right? After everything. And, crucially, it is all for a case. Which, to be honest, I might have forgotten just for a moment or two. Most important of all is the fact that any day now I will go back to my real life. Tomorrow, probably. Possibly.

Real life.

I am the world’s only consulting detective. [Invented the job.]

Also, I am a genius. [Mummy had me tested.]

A scientist.[Look at my blog.]

A violinist. [Close to professional quality, I have been told.]

Son, although that is most often just humiliating. {They do it on purpose.]

Brother to the bloody British government, which is annoying, always.[People wonder why I make rude gestures to the cameras placed throughout London.]

Best friend to John Hamish Watson, doctor and soldier and blogger.  
[Or is that just what I used to be?]

Probably.

Because, truth be told, now I am someone to whom my [former] blogger says ‘anyone but you.’

So here I am. Detective. Genius. Scientist. Musician. Son and brother.

And the former best friend to John Watson.

I curl into myself a bit, wondering how much of my 7% solution I have left.

The annoying woman is still muttering. Is she going to kick me again? I really hope not. I certainly do not need any more bruises on my body.

“I am nobody,” I say finally. “I’m Shezza, a junkie, just as you said.” I think for a moment, then add, “I used to have a best friend named John.” That is something to be proud of, I think.

For some reason, she just laughs again.

There must be something nasty in the air of this place, besides the smoke from too many joints, because my eyes are starting to burn a bit. I blink away the sudden moisture.

At least while I am here, at least while I am high, I don’t have to be who I once was. I can be anybody _but_ Sherlock Holmes. Which is what my once-upon-a-time best friend wants, apparently. And for better or worse, I have always tried to give John Watson what he wants. Or what he thinks he wants, at least, because sometimes I understand the man better than he understands himself.

So that’s me. A man who used to be somebody.

+

**Author's Note:**

> Title From: Fallen Star by James Blish


End file.
